


Once He Was Wild

by onstraysod



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Childhood, Disappointment, Gen, Pre-Canon, Wildness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 16:39:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4794689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onstraysod/pseuds/onstraysod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some believe that in order to fully embrace English magic a magician must give himself over to wildness. Desperate to win the approval of his King, a nine year-old Gilbert Norrell does just that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For Alvitr, who requested a story about young Norrell.

_Where does the wind come from that blows upon your face, that fans the pages of your book? Where the harum-scarum magic of small wild creatures meets the magic of Man, where the language of the wind and the rain and the trees can be understood, there we will find the Raven King…_ \- Thomas Lanchester, _Treatise concerning the Language of Birds_ , Chapter 61

***

When he was nine years old - just that once, and only for a night - Gilbert Norrell went wild. It was the act of a child - a lonely, imaginative child full of childish yearning - but in later years his adult self could not bear to remember it. The dirt on his skin, the small furry things with which he had run and hidden and waited in the darkness. He had been washing that wildness from himself ever since, scrubbing it from his body, his mind, his heart: the smell of damp earth in his nostrils, the taste of rain on his tongue. The cry of the ravens in his ears, echoing around his skull.

And yet he feared he would never be truly clean.

It had been midsummer and his governess had taken him to Hurtfew Abbey to visit his Uncle Haythornthwaite. Gilbert's father had had no desire to make the visit - Haythornthwaite was the eldest brother of his late wife - nor was he inclined to spare the time from his shipping business in Hull. So the governess would have to do. She was a respectable middle-aged woman by the name of Holcombe, whose excellent manners and sharp wit made her an exemplary chaperone for any young man visiting the house of a wealthy bachelor. As a governess, however, she was businesslike, aloof, and cold. And as Gilbert Norrell was a quiet, introspective, studious boy, the carriage ride from Hull was a markedly silent one. Governess and charge exchanged but a dozen words over the whole course of the journey.

Aside from his trunk, packed by Ms. Holcombe with his finest clothes, Gilbert took only two things with him to Hurtfew, and both of these he carried on his person. One was a copy of Thomas Lanchester’s _Treatise concerning the Language of Birds_ which he read on the journey, though by that time he had read it so often he knew almost every sentence by heart. The other was a small silver locket containing a portrait of his mother. This he wore on a chain beneath his shirt.

Uncle Haythornthwaite was a ruddy-cheeked, good-natured, if somewhat mercurial man, as many men who live alone in sprawling country manors tend to be. Gilbert and Ms. Holcombe had not been in the parlour for more than five minutes, taking tea, before Haythornthwaite spotted the book tucked protectively beneath his nephew's arm.

"What do you read there, young Master Gilbert?" he asked in a pleasantly gruff Yorkshire voice.

Gilbert held it out tentatively for inspection. He did not care for other people handling his books. He feared they might take them away. "It is Lanchester’s _Treatise--_ ”

"Ah! Lanchester!" Uncle Haythornthwaite snatched up the volume, smiling, and rapped his fingers upon the cover with an expression of fondness. “ _Language of Birds_. I know it well.”

"Yes, he can scarcely be parted from that book long enough to take his lessons or, indeed, his meals," Ms. Holcombe observed with a little affected laugh. "I have encouraged him to read material more appropriate and respectable for a young gentleman--"

“Lanchester was a great admirer of The Raven King," Haythornthwaite said, ignoring Ms. Holcombe and keeping a steady eye on his nephew's face. "Mourned his departure from these lands all his life. Tell me, young man, are you interested in the history of our ancient king?" Gilbert nodded and Uncle Haythornthwaite smiled broadly, his pale blue eyes sparkling. "Aye, that would be your mother's doing, I shouldn't wonder." He paused, glancing down at the book rather thoughtfully as he handed it back to Gilbert. "You were but four when she passed, so perhaps you can't remember... Did she teach you the words of the Yorkshire Game?”

Gilbert bit his lip and glanced at Ms. Holcombe. She had heard him reciting it once and had reprimanded him for it. But to lie to his uncle would be wrong, and since it was a direct question-- "I greet thee, Lord, and bid thee welcome to my heart.”

"Ha ha!" Haythornthwaite clapped his hands together and beamed upon his nephew. "Well done, my lad, well done! You're a Yorkshireman through and through, by birth and blood and loyalty to our Black King!" He slapped a meaty hand down upon Gilbert's shoulder and the boy flinched at the unfamiliarity of so warm a touch. "I think you and I are going to get on quite well together, my lad. Quite well indeed.”

***

"This land belonged to John Uskglass," Uncle Haythornthwaite told Gilbert as they walked around the exterior of the house a few days later. It was a warm afternoon, and the sun had chased the morning rains away and dried the grass and hedges. The clematis and honeysuckle were still in bloom against the stone walls and everything was a riot of growth, a living labyrinth of green. "The abbey was built at the king's command, of stones from his quarries." And here Uncle Haythornthwaite struck the nearest wall with his walking stick. "He visited several times, it's said: walked in the gardens and the woods, laid his blessing upon the foundation.”

"But where is he now, Uncle?" Gilbert ventured to ask. He felt more comfortable speaking to his uncle than he had ever felt with any other adult, yet he remained quiet for the most part, choosing to listen rather than talk. "I have read as much as I can find, but none of the books say. Where has he gone?”

"Who can tell? Wherever he wishes, I suppose, for what could prevent him? Such a magician as he - who can make doors of the rain and roads of the blowing wind?" Uncle Haythornthwaite shook his head. "The King may go wherever he pleases.”

They walked on in silence for a few minutes until Gilbert had gathered enough courage to say: "I should like to be a magician.”

Uncle Haythornthwaite stopped and turned to consider him, a hand tugging in a distracted manner at the tail of his powdered wig. "Would you now? Well, that is a noble ambition. Your father, however, hopes that you will take over his business when you come of age, I believe.”

Gilbert could not hide the sneer that twisted his lips. "Father says that magic is not respectable.”

"Not respectable!" Haythornthwaite cried, his eyes boggling a bit, his voice rising in volume so that Gilbert took a step back, fearful that he had said something wrong. "Not respectable! It was respectable enough for a king! Well, what should I expect from a man of the counting house, hmm? A man of ledgers and figures!" He shook his head, then scrutinized the boy closely. "I can't pretend, my young man, that your father's opinion of magic isn't the general sentiment in these accursed days. If you want to be a magician you shall find yourself fighting against such narrow-minded nonsense every day. You will have to struggle and work to make magic respectable again! But I have faith in you. As bright a lad as you are-- If anyone can elevate magic to the position of esteem it once held, I believe it is you.”

Gilbert did not reply, but a curious warmth flooded his chest as he walked on beside his uncle. He craned his neck to look up at the walls of the abbey, the sun bouncing off its leaded windows, and he could imagine that each light-colored stone had been spirited into place by the merest flick of The Raven King's hand. Did some of his magic remain in those stones, in the plants in the gardens whose ancestors had been brushed by the King's trailing cloak? Or in the roots of the trees in the surrounding woodlands whose seedling forebears had been trod into the soil by the sole of the King’s boot? Gilbert's gaze fell upon a wall of ancient, twisted trees that bordered the western lawn, a physical shadow of twisted grey trunks and deep green crowns that stretched off into the distance, an impenetrable, perpetual twilight beneath its hoary eaves. As he gazed at the woods a cloud of dark bodies rose from the trees, wheeled like a column of smoke caught by the wind, and settled back down in the canopy of leaves, cawing loudly enough for the sounds to reach Gilbert's ears, an untranslatable language.

"My land agent tells me I should have those woods cleared out," Uncle Haythornthwaite said, noticing the direction of Gilbert's stare and indicating the woods with his stick. "Burn them down, he says, to open up the view. Been saying so for years now. But I wouldn't dare. I've tried to explain it to him, but he's a southern man, a Surrey man. He doesn't understand it. But you do, I'll warrant.”

Gilbert nodded. "Those are ravens. His birds. John Uskglass's birds.”

"His birds. His messengers. His apostles. I'd no more burn out their roosting place than I'd take a torch to my own bed. Wherever the king may be, you may be sure of one thing: they're still serving him. Still speaking with him. Still calling out his praises with those raspy croaks. He'd hear of it, my lad, if those woods were burned. And it would go the worse for me.”

Gilbert looked up at his uncle's face, quizzically. "But if The Raven King is gone--"

"Gone for now, yes," Uncle Haythornthwaite cut in, nodding. "But not gone forever. And perhaps not gone always, though people may think it. There are doors, young Master Gilbert: more doors than you or I can imagine. Doors in the rain, doors in the mist, doors in the shifting sunlight that slants down between the trees. Who can say whether or not, from time to time, he uses these doors to pay a visit to his kingdom? Perhaps the birds call him. Perhaps a magician could call him, too, if he knew the words the birds use, and if he was worthy enough to speak them.”

***

Gilbert spent hours each day in his uncle’s library at Hurtfew, slowly inching his way along each shelf, angling his head to one side to read each gilt-lettered title until his neck ached. There were a great many books about magic in Uncle Haythornthwaite’s collection, and a few books _of_ magic too, and Gilbert would take these from their places, prop them open upon his knees, and read for hours, curled up in one of the armchairs nearest the fire. Ms. Holcombe had admonished him for this: he was here to visit his uncle, what would Mr. Haythornthwaite think of a young man who hid away in this dark corner of the house, reading, when he might have been out riding or hunting as other young men did? But when she launched into this lecture one afternoon at tea in Uncle Haythornthwaite’s presence, the old man had given her a look which froze her voice in her throat, and thenceforth the debate was effectively ended.

It was at the end of his second week at Hurtfew that Gilbert found it: an obscure little manuscript on the history of English magic entitled _The Necessitie of Wyldness_ , written by an anonymous author and set down in print in 1584. Gilbert had made a list of all the books of and about magic of which he had ever read about or heard, a list of many pages that he kept folded and tucked into the back of _The Language of Birds_ , but this volume was not on that list. He asked his Uncle Haythornthwaite what he knew about it.

“Very little indeed, my lad, very little. It has been in this library since before my father’s time, before his father’s father’s time, I don’t doubt. A curious volume.” Uncle Haythornthwaite considered the slim, calfskin-bound book, turning it over in his large, gnarled hands. “No one knows who wrote it, but there are plenty of theories. It’s widely believed to have been written a great many years before it was published, centuries even. Some think it is a manual of magic set down by the great Merlin himself. Oh, not the old fellow of the legends who turned Uther into Gorlois and made all manner of other mischief, but the real Merlin: the bard, the druid, who after the Battle of Arfderydd lost his wits and went wandering in the Caledonian Woods. 2 But there are others who think--" And here Uncle Haythornthwaite looked up at his nephew, a peculiar sparkle in his watery blue eyes. “Well, legend has it that The Raven King himself authored a book once upon a time. Perhaps… _Perhaps_ …” And he handed the book back to Gilbert and left him alone in the library, patting the boy’s shoulder in a conspiratorial way as he passed.

***

He heard them sometimes as he sat in the library reading, their calls slipping through the joins in the glass of the windows set high in the stone walls. The ravens in the wood, calling out to one another, calling out to their Ancient King. There would be silence for a long time, the silence of dust settling on old books and flames licking at wood and ashes crumbling in the grate, and he would fall deeply down amid the words that passed before his eyes, until it seemed to him that the mere mention of John Uskglass brought the cry of ravens to fill his mind. Then he would realize, slowly, that the sound was external; that out there in the wood the ravens were gathering as the shadows of evening drew down. And a tingle of excitement would drum against his bones and whip his heart into a faster gait.

***

_What is thou willinge to sacrifice for the possession of magicke? What wilt thou laye upon its altar heaped with red apples, its woodlande altar of oake and ashe and thorn? For thou must demonstrate thy devotion through sacrifice, through the surrender of some cherished parte of thyselfe. The King of all magicke, beneath whose black-winged banners all of Englyshe magicke doth live and breathe and gather, requires the best parte of thyselfe for fealty, and when that whiche thou most treasures is layde before him in the abandon of wyldness, the Black King shall see from his shadows what is done in his honoure, his sharp-beaked messengers shall speak of it, and thy supplication shall be rewarded. In wyldness ye shall find him, and in wyldness join the revels of his courte, and there among the Oake and Ashe and Thorn ye shall receive your Crowne of Ivy and so be named Magician._ 3

***

1As quoted in Susanna Clarke, _Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell_, Ch. 13

2Uncle Haythornthwaite is here referring to Myrddin Wyllt or “Myrddin the Wild,” a Welsh seer and bard whose exploits and prophecies are described in the poetry of _The Black Book of Carmarthen_. The Battle of Arfderydd was a 6th century battle believed to have been fought in what is now Cumbria.

3 Anonymous, _The Necessitie of Wyldness_ , Ch. 3


	2. Chapter 2

At the end of his third week at Hurtfew Abbey, Gilbert was ready. A dozen of Uncle Haythornthwaite’s neighbours were coming to dine that evening and Ms. Holcombe had sent Gilbert early to his room after tea to wash and dress in his finest clothes. He lingered in his bedchamber after Ms. Holcombe’s inspection had deemed him respectable enough to be presented to his uncle’s friends, sitting upon the bed anticipating the summons he would not answer, watching from his window as the sky turned first rose, then lavender, then the greyish-purple of a day-old bruise. He heard the cries of the roosting ravens and he waited until the first stars were just visible in the dusk. Then he looked down at his hands.

In one he held his well-read copy of Lanchester’s _Language of Birds_. In the other, a silver locket he had drawn from its customary place against his sternum, beneath his shirt. The front of the oval locket bore an etching of a rose, surrounding by an interwoven wreath of filigree. He unfastened the tiny clasp on the side and opened it, as he had done a thousand times before.

Gilbert's mother smiled back at him, all the bloom of youth and hope shining in her miniature face. Her round apple cheeks tinted pink with the tip of the portraitist's brush, a shine to her chestnut curls and wide blue eyes. He had been told it was a good likeness, but he could not say so himself. He had no memory of her face and what he did remember was not visible in the portrait. The pleasant chime of her voice. The gentle softness of her hands.

He stared at her for several minutes more, and then he was decided. He laid Lanchester on the bedside table and left the bedchamber, stealthily pausing to peek around the angle of every door and corner, pausing to listen for footsteps or the voices of servants. At last, by way of a rickety set of narrow, unlit back stairs, he reached a side door that led into the garden and stole quietly into the shadows of the summer evening.

There was still enough light left on the margins of the sky for Gilbert to see his way clearly to the wood, and he went forward quickly over the lawn, looking back over his shoulder from time to time to make certain he was not pursued. There was no path leading into these woods, no track of hard-packed earth that wound around neatly cultivated trees like there was in the copse of silver birches and chestnut closest to the house. This wood was utterly wild and the closer he got to it, the more Gilbert released how deep the shadows between its trees already were. An eternal night existed in woods like this one, a dusk that obeys no time or season and is pierced only in places by the light of the moon or the stars. He had read about such places, but Gilbert had never entered one; nature was, in his experience, plants and flowers laid out in symmetrical beds, trimmed and pruned, and patches of grass kept clean and orderly by the scythe and the rake. There was no symmetry in that wood. All was riot and confusion: the broken, uneven ground a tangle of twisting roots, brambles and ivy, dead leaves heaped up over countless autumns. The trees leaned at odd angles, their branches tangling, grasping, a fretwork canopy without coherent design. And as the stars began to emerge in the sky overhead and the violet shade of dusk deepened in the west, the wood seemed to teem with birds, a cacophony of cries and songs and screams. Above all the other avian voices the ravens, their gravel-throated caws a prayer to their hidden Master.

Gilbert had just stepped into the verge of the wood and paused to let his eyes adjust to the gloaming when a movement to his right arrested him and made his heart thump violently. He almost laughed at his foolishness when he saw that it was nothing more than a hare emerging from a sweet briar and seeming just as surprised to see Gilbert as Gilbert was to see it. The small creature sat very still for a moment, then hopped towards a narrow gap in the undergrowth, a kind of natural pathway made by the hooves of passing deer, maybe, or the loping paws of the fox. The hare turned from time to time to consider the strange creature that had entered the wood, almost as if he were inviting Gilbert to follow him; then, in the space between blinks, it disappeared. Gilbert felt his fear of the wood melt away. The hare was a small thing, a quiet and soft and trembling creature. If it could venture deeper into the dark wood than surely so could he. 4

He plunged forward, following the break in the undergrowth. The ground was uneven beneath his feet, sloping up sometimes, then sloping down, eroded in places by little rivulets of water tumbling down from hidden springs. Great moss-covered roots jutted up at unexpected angles to trip him: most he managed to scrabble over but one caught him unaware and he fell, catching himself on the palms of his hands. He got to his feet and examined himself in the fading light: his palms were scraped and dirt mixed with tiny droplets of blood on his skin. He flinched at the sight of it, but he would not be deterred. He wiped them as best he could upon the thighs of his breeches and went on.

The branches of small trees, of saplings and shrubs, reached out to him as he passed, clutching at his cheeks and his coat and his legs as if eager to touch the first human who had ever approached them. Some of them had thorns and briars and once he found himself so ensnared by grasping limbs that he experienced a moment's panic. He yanked himself free and heard a sharp tearing sound: the sleeve of his coat had ripped at the shoulder. He didn't dare contemplate the scolding this would earn him from Ms. Holcombe, but then when he returned Ms. Holcombe’s scoldings would no longer matter.

He had meant to be more careful after falling over the tree root, but the shadows were growing thicker as the dusk deepened and the path - poor path that it was - wound and twisted and plunged into hollows with such frequency that he often could not discern the obstacles that lay ahead. Struggling to keep his balance on a particularly sharp slope he was propelled downwards by a shifting scrim of pebbles and found himself ankle-deep in cold water before he knew it was there. An oath he had once heard a coachman use came almost unbidden from his lips and he climbed out of the sluggish little stream and up the opposite bank, a steep, eroded tangle of protruding roots and trailing ivy. Halfway up he slipped and was obliged to ascend the rest of the way on his knees; by the time he threw himself over the edge onto drier ground, he was half covered in mud.

When Gilbert got to his feet again and looked about him, all thought of the state of his clothing vanished from his mind. He stood on the edge of a shallow bowl where the trees grew more sparsely and gaps in their branches gave glimpses of the sky. Stars glinted like diamonds on the tips of the trees' fingers and the moon, round as a guinea, had risen high enough in the east to send its light slanting down into the wood. By its clear white gleam Gilbert could see the hare - the same hare or some wilder cousin - watching him from the other side of the dell, ears twitching. And he could hear the ravens, their cries louder: he was close now to their roosting place, so close. As he watched the hare he wondered: what was wildness, really? What was it that such a creature possessed that he did not? Or was it that he possessed things they did not, things that were superfluous here, encumbrances that marked him out as something that could never be wild?

Gilbert removed his torn, mud-splashed coat and hung it over a protruding branch. He knelt and drew off his mud-encrusted shoes. He took off his neckcloth and his stockings and stood barefoot, toes sinking into the mud and the loam and the thick, damp carpet of decaying leaves. He scooped up the mud that clung thick to his breeches and smeared it over his cheeks and his brow and across the upper part of his chest and through his hair, wincing but determined. He took a handful of dead leaves from the ground and crushed them in his fists and pressed them to his cheeks and chest and brow and they clung to the mud. Now he was wild. Now he was no different from the hare and the fox and the ravens. He had come, he guessed, only a little way into the wood, but with the twisting of the narrow path and the deepness of the dusk, it felt much farther as he stood there, barefoot, covered in mud and leaves. It felt like he had come to a different world entirely.

He took off running after the hare and the hare jumped and disappeared into the brush. Drawing great breaths into his lungs Gilbert felt as if he could sing as loudly as the ravens, as if he could cry out loud enough to tremble the stars. He rushed on towards the beckoning calls of the ravens, twigs and brambles scraping his cheeks and arms, small stones tearing at the soles of his feet. Nothing could stop him. Something bounded from the path before him into the undergrowth; something with a long tail fled before his approach. Suddenly he emerged into a small clearing and right above him, in the highest branches of an ancient, towering oak, the ravens were screaming, the rustle of their manifold wings like a small hurricane among the thick summer leaves.

Gilbert paused for a moment to catch his breath and look around. He fancied he could almost make them out from time to time, flitting from one limb to another, flapping their wings and snapping their beaks. They were loud, so loud that their calls rang in his ears, reverberated off his heart. Welcoming him, he thought. Welcoming him in their own language.

The King's language.

He took the locket from his pocket and, kneeling, laid it down in a little niche in the bark at the oak tree's base. Then, stepping back a few feet, he knelt to the ground. He clasped his hands, almost the same way he did in church on Sunday mornings, but placed his hands not at his lips to murmur a prayer but against his chest, over his pounding heart. And then he spoke, quietly at first, his voice hardly discernible to his own ears beneath the cries of the ravens.

"I greet thee, Lord, and bid thee welcome to my heart.”

The wind rose a little and the branches of the oak bobbed and shifted and the ravens shook their wings. Gilbert felt a sudden wave of fear pass over him and he squeezed his eyes shut. But he willed himself to open them, to stare at the black girth of the oak's trunk, and he spoke again, louder.

"I greet thee, Lord, and bid thee welcome to my heart.”

He could hear himself that time, his voice tremulous but stronger beneath the cawing of the ravens. They seemed to him to cry with more excitement now and the wind blew again, whistling through the branches of all the trees, causing the light of star and moon to tremble and the shadows to dance about the clearing. The bole of the oak seemed blacker now than it had before, wider too, and Gilbert curled the fingers of his hands tightly together and tried to keep from shaking. His heart was racing so hard against his sternum that he thought his breastbone would shatter.

"I greet thee, Lord, and bid thee welcome to my heart!" he cried, louder and stronger than ever, and the ravens, startled by the sound, lifted themselves in one body and, with a scream that rent the night, they took to flight.

And nothing happened.

The clearing fell silent, save for the sighing of the wind amid the branches and the drumbeat of a boy's heart.

Then the rain began to fall.

There was a little hollow in the base of another oak which grew opposite the one the ravens had been roosting in, and into this Gilbert crawled and curled, hugging his knees to his chest, watching the clearing and the little glint of moonlight that ricocheted through the raindrops and picked out the silver sheen of the locket where it lay. Perhaps it took time to call the King from his palace in the Other Lands. He would sit there and wait.

The rain fell harder, slapping against the leaves, trickling down the trunk of the oak and into the hollow where he waited until he sat in a cold pool of water. The rainclouds clustered, obscuring the face of the moon and drowning its light, blotting out the sparkling stars. It grew darker, much darker; the trees became slender giants, pillars of a deeper blackness smeared upon the night. The summer wood was chilled by the rain. As he sat, hugging his legs, his toes slipping against wet bark and deepening mud, Gilbert thought he heard movement around him in the shadows: the predatory stir of creatures circling the clearing, the snuffling of noses and the slavering of tongues against sharp teeth. He shifted in the hollow, fancying he felt the skinny legs of a spider climbing along the ladder of his spine. He was cold in his shirtsleeves and began to shiver; when he'd shivered so long and so hard that his teeth ached from chattering, he grew too warm and then he became sleepy. His eyelids drooped; the clearing lay empty before him.

He might have slept for a time, or simply fallen into a daze, but he came back to his surroundings with an unpleasant jolt when he felt something move across the tops of his feet. Something with soft fur and tiny naked toes, something with whiskers and tiny, piercing claws. He gave one sob as he kicked out to scare it away, then bit down on his tongue so hard he tasted the salt-tang of blood. He would not cry, not here, not waiting for his King. He squinted into the rain, into the darkness, towards the black monolith of the oak. He could no longer see the locket.

He wondered if already it had rusted. He wondered if the rainwater had leaked inside and wet the paint of his mother's portrait, mixing the colors into one meaningless blur.

Then, suddenly, in a space between the trunks of the trees that grew more thickly clustered behind the oak, Gilbert saw it. Or thought he saw it. He narrowed his eyes again, squinted, until the wind shifted a cloud just enough to let a sliver of moonlight fall into the clearing. He drew in a sharp breath, held it painfully in his lungs; his heart jumped, hanging suspended for a moment in his throat.

There were eyes there. Eyes in the darkness, in the shadows beneath the trees. There was just enough moonlight to scatter across them, the wet gleam of living eyes, gazing towards him. A deeper darkness, too, a solid mass standing motionless, observing him; tall, imposing, gathering the shadows to it like a winter cloak. It stirred and Gilbert curled his shaking hands into tight fists; it stepped into the clearing.

It was not a king, unless it be a kind of king, a king of the wood, ruling over the hares and foxes and squirrels and the other, smaller things that scuttled through the bushes and fallen leaves. The stag watched Gilbert where he sat in the hollow, trembling, a small, pale two-legged animal with loud breath and a pounding pulse, a harmless creature that smelled of youth and fear. Gilbert stared back at the stag, its thick neck holding its regal head proudly erect, a coil of ivy tangled through its antlers. There was power there, a wildness that was undoubtedly a form of magic, and majesty in its bearing.

But it was not his king.

The stag turned away and bounded from the clearing. Rainwater stung in Gilbert's eyes. He hugged his legs tighter to his chest and laid his head upon his knees, listening to the melody of the rain, the higher strains of the wind in the treetops.

He slept.

And, suddenly, he woke.

The rain had stopped. There was a change in the darkness as if, somewhere he could not see, the first pale stirrings of dawn had risen but not yet touched the woods. And there were voices crying out, human voices. Calling his name.

A man with a lantern stumbled into the clearing, his boots thick with mud, his coat drenched from brushing against wet leaves. He lifted the lantern and the flickering candlelight fell over Gilbert's face.

"He's here, sir! Over here. He's quite safe.”

Uncle Haythornthwaite hobbled into the clearing, looking ashen and winded, leaning heavily on his walking stick. He stared at Gilbert wordlessly, an inscrutable expression on his face, and Gilbert stared back.

"He didn't come," Gilbert said softly.

Uncle Haythornthwaite said nothing at first but simply extended his free hand. "Come on, lad. Let's get you home.”

Gilbert uncurled himself and rose from the hollow, every limb aching. He went to his uncle but did not take his hand. He looked once behind him at the clearing, at the massive trunk of the oak and at the spot where the locket lay, hidden from his sight beneath windblown, rain-sodden leaves. 5 There was a sudden blur of movement against a low branch and Gilbert saw a single raven swoop down to perch, folding its black wings against its body and giving a single raspy caw.

"He didn't come," he said again, and Uncle Haythornthwaite laid a hand on his nephew's shoulder. They walked through the wood without another word.

Ms. Holcombe was in the hall when they arrived and the sight of her charge - bloodied and mud-smeared, barefoot and sodden - made her lose all grip on the facade of genteel calm she wore about her like an expensive shawl. "Is this the behaviour of a gentleman?" she shrieked at him, pursuing him to the foot of the stairs where one of Uncle Haythornthwaite's maids waited to usher him upstairs to a warm bath and fresh clothes. Gilbert made no answer, did not stop to meet her gaze. "Is this respectable?" she cried, her voice ringing shrill up the staircase behind him.

The maid, an older woman with plump, rosy cheeks, said nothing as she helped him into the steaming bath, handed him a wash cloth and soap, and gathered up his torn, soiled breeches and shirt from the floor. She merely gave him a smile as she departed. It was a smile that bore no judgment, and no pity. The kind of smile, Gilbert thought, that his mother might have given him at such a time.

After he was clean and dressed in his nightshirt, he was forced to endure a lecture from Ms. Holcombe. But he was too weary, in body and mind, to let her words impact him, let alone sting. He was ordered to his bed and he went willingly, for every joint ached and the soles of his feet were so torn that he could not bear his own weight. The rain had started again and it was a grey, sunless day. He slept through it, losing his sorrow in the dark oblivion of sleep.

But when he woke it was dusk again and the ravens were roosting in the wood, their cries invading his bedchamber, mocking and cruel. Gilbert rose slowly and went to the window. He gazed out into the fading light at the dark smudge of the wood across the expanse of lawn and the black flecks that rose and fell on widespread wings, skimming over the heads of the trees. He noticed, as he rested his hands flat against the leaded glass, that there was still dirt caked beneath his fingernails, and the sight of it made him tremble. With sudden resolve, and a swell of something hot in his head, he pushed the window open and a gust of rain-wet wind blew into his face, carrying the hoarse cries of the ravens with it.

"I gave you everything," he whispered to the wood, to the circling ravens. "I gave you what you wanted and you didn't come. _But I will make you come._ You shall see. I will become the greatest magician that has ever lived, greater even than you. And someday I will summon you again and you will come. And you will owe your fealty to me.”  6

Gilbert Norrell closed the window with a bang and returned to his bed. And over in the wood the ravens ceased their cries.

***

_The human hearte maye best be described as a gardyne, faire and flowering and well filled with manyfold delights. Yet if a gardyner be hurte even once fulle sore, and grow thus fearfull, he maye wishe to shelter his gardyn from the wyldernesse beyond and lett no tainte of wyldness enter in. So the gardyner sets his masons to work in buiding a walle about his gardyn and one by one the stones are laide, until the walle is talle and the gardyn is isolated._

_But it is ofttimes found that such gardyns be the wyldest of all. For their gardyners feare the least leaf blown from the wood, or the creepyng beneath the walle of the least weede or the clambering over the stones of the least tendril of ivy. For if those walled gardyns were to admit wyldness, they woulde go wylder than any, and wherefore would that wyldness ende?_ 7

***

4 In his adulthood, Gilbert Norrell evinced a peculiar aversion to rabbits.

5 The portrait in the locket was, in fact, not the only likeness of Gilbert Norrell's mother in existence. When he inherited Hurtfew Abbey he discovered a portrait of her that his Uncle Haythorntwaite had kept in his private sitting room. Norrell had it moved to the library where it hung in a place of prominence. Early in his time in Norrell's service, John Childermass entered the library as part of his duties as a footman and, in Norrell's presence, remarked upon the portrait without knowing the identity of its subject, saying that the young woman depicted was uncommonly lovely and had about her face an air of kindness and cleverness not frequently seen. He was surprised the next day to be informed that he would thenceforth serve Mr. Norrell as his personal assistant.

6 Norrell tried to summon John Uskglass several more times: once in his late teens and again in his mid-twenties after taking up residence at Hurtfew Abbey. Failing both times, Norrell renounced The Raven King and set himself against his magic. He decided, in the third year of his residence at Hurtfew, to do as his uncle's old land agent had advised and destroy the wild wood where the ravens roosted. He hired workmen to begin cutting down the trees. To his great shame, however, Norrell was unable to go through with it. Out of fear or some lingering reverence that he would not admit, even to himself, Norrell called a halt to the work after only three trees had been felled. The wood remains on the grounds of Hurtfew Abbey to this day.

7 Anonymous, _The Necessitie of Wyldness_ , Epilogue


End file.
